Tobii Dynavox AB

STO:TDVOX

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call. We will cover the second quarter of 2023, summarizing our business in April, May and June of 2023. My name is Fredrik Ruben, I am the CEO of Tobii Dynavox. And with me on this call, I also have Linda Tybring, the CFO. Can we hear you Linda?

[Linda Tybring, executive]

Yes, you can hear me. I hope.

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

She will, of course, cover the financials in more detail. And in this earnings call for the second quarter of 2023, we will first in our usual manner, take you through some of the brief fundamentals about the company. We will summarize the main takeaways from the quarter. We will dive deeper into the financials. And thereafter, we will open up for a Q&A session. And you can submit questions during this live session in the chat function in teams. We, of course, always welcome offline questions sent to the email above, which is Linda's email [e-mail].

Okay. But again, before we dive deeper into the second quarter of 2023, I'd like to make a short summary about what Tobii Dynavox is about. This may be a repetition for some of you, but still fundamental to really understand the company. And first and foremost, it's important to reiterate our mission and vision, which I know is very dear not only to the roughly 600 colleagues around the world in Tobii Dynavox, but also to our ecosystems, our partner investors.

And our vision is a world where everyone can communicate and we will contribute to this via focusing on our mission, which leads to empower people with disabilities to do what they once did or never thought possible. And this also summarizes 2 of our main user stories, do what you once did, that may be the person who led a normal life until a diagnosis such as ALS, which rendered her unable to control the body or communicate like before.

And the other story that never thought possible, but can refer to a child diagnosed at a very early age with a condition such as autism or cerebral palsy where thanks to our solutions, she can do much more than the world around her ever thought possible. And on the picture here to the right, you see Delaina Parrish from Florida, U.S.A. She was born with cerebral palsy and she is a great example of just that.

The market that we serve is hugely underserved. Some 50 million people have a condition so great, they simply cannot communicate unless they have a solution like ours. And every year, about 2 million people are being diagnosed, yet only about 2% of those are actually being helped and the rest remains silent. And the main reason for this spells lack of awareness, also among the professionals and the prescribers task to assist these users and combined with a poor healthcare reimbursement system.

Tobii Dynavox, we operate with a global footprint. Today, some 3/4 of our business stems out of the U.S. and that's largely because of a reasonably well functioning funding system established some 20, 30 years ago. Our products are sold in some 65 markets around the world. Our staff is distributed similar way as our revenue, meaning that some 70% of our staff are based in North America with our U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Our second largest office is our headquarter in Stockholm, but we also have branch offices in several European countries as well as in Suzhou, China. And as of today, we are about just over 600 employees in the company.

With the recent acquisitions, we now also have established increased presence, specifically in Belgium, France, Ireland and Denmark and in addition to a smaller number of remote entries, primarily in Central Europe.

We provide a comprehensive portfolio of solutions, and they range from, if you start from the top of this slide, the content, such as the world-leading library of communication symbols, called TCS, the synthetic voices as well. Specifically, the voices is a component of an acquisition that we made in 2022 of Acapela Group, who are the world's leading provider of naturally sounding and diverse synthetic voices.

If you then go down, we have highly sophisticated communications software tailored to the type of user, which can vary greatly based on the need. Further down, we develop and design devices with cutting-edge technology and medically certified durability including communication aids controlled using eye tracking.

Further down, we have a services portfolio to help our users through the complexity of obtaining a device and getting funding for our solutions. And then last but not least, we are there to help our users, the therapies, the caregivers through a global team of support resources and we operate this model globally.

So it's important to note that each piece here is critically important and also significant differentiator for us, making us absolutely unique.

Our go-to-market model is predominantly as a prescribed aid, some 90% of our revenue come out of a public or private insurance providers. This also means that we have solid paying customers. And we have always been resilient towards changes in the overall economic climate. And in addition to that, our market is extremely under-penetrated. With that said, we will now go back to focusing on the main topic of the day, namely our earnings report for the second quarter of 2023.

Looking at the highlights, we had another solid quarter when it comes to revenue growth. The growth compared to the same quarter last year sums up to 32%. And if we adjust for currency effects, the growth was 24%. And this continues the trend as we have seen since basically the second quarter of 2022.

During the second quarter, we continued to report good growth across the board, across our different geographies, our different products and the different user groups. We benefit from a market-leading and very up-to-date product portfolio, continuously improve with new products and features. At the same time, we continue to invest in our sales and marketing organization, including further strengthening our U.S. funding organization. And this is key to navigate customers through the complexities of obtaining funding for the new communication aid through public or private insurance systems.

Our work to improve awareness and competence continue specifically among prescribed professionals. The value of being able to meet our customers is, of course, of major significance both internally and within our chains as well as with our customers. And the North American markets continue to show strong growth, it is the largest and most international market, both for us and for our industry, but we have similar growth rates now also in Europe and other countries.

The strong momentum among the younger user base continues such as children with autism and they rely heavily on our symbol communication solutions and in particular, our software TD Snap. We furthermore see a clear trend that the market where we sell directly, including the recently added Irish and Danish markets are the ones that shows the strongest growth. The reason is primarily that we have much greater opportunity in those markets to effectively both train but also support prescribers while at the same time, obviously, gain deeper understanding of the local requirements, the local processes, reimbursement systems, et cetera.

Our OpEx levels are higher than a year ago, and this must be seen in the light of the significant investment in our staff, mainly within sales and marketing, and we are also investing in systems and tools to manage a very much -- a very fast-growing business.

And then last but not least, as I'd highlight. At the end of the quarter, we're on the very -- last day of the quarter, in fact, we entered an agreement to acquire Rehadapt Engineering in Germany and I will shed some more light on this acquisition here.

So the acquisition of our long-term German partner Rehadapt, which we agreed on at the end of June, complementing a very natural way our products portfolio, while also strengthening our presence in the German market. The company is unique with their offering of high-quality, medically certified mounting systems or mounts as they typically refer to.

And mount is a product that either we or our local dealer or the prescribing entity in that market combined with the communication aid when these are fixed and attached to, for example, a wheelchair or a bed. This acquisition means that we can create solutions that makes it easier for our users to access and use their communication aids, but it also improves our ability to better in the future design and innovate further around the physical setup of each individual user.

Rehadapt will be part of the group as an independent subsidiary to Tobii Dynavox under its own brand and its own organization in continuing to serve the entire industry in all of the customer segments. We expect to close the deal during the third quarter and thus welcome some 50 new colleagues to the Tobii Dynavox team.

And some financials in 2022, Rehadapt had worldwide sales of roughly EUR 10 million at an EBIT margin of about 20%. And Tobii Dynavox, we will pay EUR 15 million upfront in cash with a potential earn-out of up to EUR 3.5 million after 12 months based on the financial development of the company. And this deal is financed from our own cash and with an extended credit facility with our bank. All right. Now we will -- I will hand over to Linda to have us dive a little bit deeper into our financials.

[Linda Tybring, executive]

Thank you, Fredrik. So the Q2 financials, revenue for the quarter came in at SEK 381 million, a 32% year-on-year growth, and adjusted for currency effects, the growth was 24%. M&A contributed with 4%, hence, the organic growth was solid 20% and as Frederic said, this has been a continuing trend for the past 5 quarters.

North America continues to solid with strong growth as well as Europe and some of the rest of the world. The gross margin ended up at 68%. The main factors behind the improvement of the 4 percentage points were normalized component and shipping costs as well as the sales price increases. Almost half of the price adjustment announced earlier in 2023 are now visible in our income statement. EBIT for the quarter was SEK 29 million or 7.6% versus 5.4% last year. Excluding nonrecurring cost of SEK 6 million, EBIT was SEK 35 million corresponding to a margin of 9.2%. This was more than doubled versus last year's EBIT of SEK 16 million.

Our OpEx increased with 16% organically, excluding the nonrecurring items of SEK 6 million, mainly related to the acquisition of Rehadapt. The OpEx increase mainly relates to significant staff increases in the sales and marketing organization, but also a new agreement regarding salaries a benefit that came into force April 1. Investment in the system and tools to manage our growing business also contributed to the cost increase. Net effect of R&D spend increased with minus SEK 5 million and is driven by depreciation related to -- or major product launches during the last 12 to 18 months.

Cash flow after continuous investment was positive SEK 30 million, cash at hand was SEK 116 million, net debt was SEK 476 million, and net debt over the last 12 months EBITDA was 2x in absolute terms, which is the lower range of financial targets, which we have said between 2x and 3x.

The financing of the acquisition of Rehadapt Engineering, we expanded our credit facility with an additional drone from Swedbank of SEK 100 million during the quarter, the total of SEK 800 million. This will come into effect when we have closed the acquisition of Rehadapt. We have amortized our credit facility with SEK 30 million in the quarter and the total used credit facility alone at the end of the quarter was SEK 542 million. That was a lot of numbers, Fredrik, so let's get back to you to conclude the earnings call.

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Thank you, Linda. Yes, a lot of numbers, but in our world, good numbers, I would say. So before we open up for some questions, I'd like to reiterate the main takeaways from the second quarter of 2023. So we continue to show solid growth, a trend that we started over a year ago.

In absolute terms, we grew our revenue in the quarter by 32%, if we adjust for currencies, the growth was 24%, and if we then further adjust for acquisitions made in last year, the organic underlying growth was 20%. We see revenue growth in this quarter across all geographies and across all product segments. There is a clear trend that markets where we sell directly to our customers are the ones that showed the strongest growth.

Our profitability continues to move upwards, mainly from higher prices and normalized costs after the pandemic. The Medicare announced increase in the reimbursement levels for our products by roughly 9% gradually affects our revenues in 2023 and in the quarter now, we see that almost half of these price adjustments are now visible in our income statement, but we expect to see the full effect of this during the second half of the year.

The acquired companies contribute well and are developing favorably. We look forward to prospects both for growth and profitability, and we think that they are bright. We are investing in systems and tools to further solidify and increase the scalability of this company. We reiterate our long-term financial goals, which for the sake of repetition, reads that over time, we aim to maintain an annual growth adjusted for currencies in excess of 10% and this is obviously a target that we currently overshoot.

At the same time, we want to reach and maintain an EBIT margin of 15% or more. And here, we still have some more ground to cover, but we take a clear step in that direction with continued growth, strong gross margin and OpEx levels that is normalized. We remain confident that we will reach this.

We want to maintain a net debt ratio over the last 12 months EBITDA of between 2x to 3x, and the outcome in absolute terms in the quarter was 2.0, and once we have landed in our split from Tobii and we have consolidated our balance sheet somewhat, we will distribute the dividend provided that other more compelling alternatives, such as acquisitions do not take preference, and these targets are expressed with a rough time horizon of 2 years.

All right. With that said, I'm actually handing over the microphone to Christian Hall, who in the usual manner, will take questions from the audience. Hey Christian.

[Unknown Analyst]

Hello there. So let's start with some questions. First of all, a couple of questions from Oscar Ronnkvist at ABG. So admin costs came up sharply quarter-on-quarter, partly driven by nonrecurring expenses, correct? But it's still up significantly quarter-on-quarter. What is the run rate we should expect when this item is stabilized?

[Linda Tybring, executive]

Yes. You -- I mean, as you are saying Oscar in the administration costs, you have the one-time cost that you should adjust for, but we also stated that we are now starting to invest in our IT infrastructure and processes. So you should expect that this will continue going forward as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Another question from Oscar. As the acquisition is margin accretive and you have not changed your targets. Do you still expect to reach plus or over 15% EBIT margin, excluding Rehadapt? Any update on timing.

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Oscar, the short answer is yes. We still expect to reach the plus 15% EBIT margin even if you take Rehadapt out. Rehadapt obviously has a slightly higher run rate historically, but they're also significantly smaller than Tobii Dynavox. Any update on timing? No. We expect to close these. There are some formalities that we need to sort out but during the third quarter is still our best guess to close the deal.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And there's another question from Oscar. Could we expect a further price increases in the second half of the year to support additional gross margin improvements? Or are there any COGS effects we should keep in mind like current component and freight prices?

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

I can start since I'm on the video already, Linda. And yes, we do believe that the price increases will support additional gross margin improvements. And no, we don't see any negative outlook when it comes to component prices or freight prices. So I would say that your underlying estimates here are largely correct, Oscar. I don't know if you want to add something to that, Linda.

[Linda Tybring, executive]

I think you're totally correct. So what we see is that, I mean, as we said, close to half of the price increase that Medicare has announced can we see in the income statement now. And gradually, we will get up to the 9% at the end of the year, there's no large cost or cost of goods sold related to that.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And then we have a question from [indiscernible]. Congrats to a very strong report, you had some progress in several markets outside the U.S. in the quarter. Can you comment on the visibility for the second half i.e. temporary improvements or more of a structural uptake? Also, can you also comment on the OpEx increase? I guess the 16% is a fair number also for coming 3 quarters or the hike in pricing seen in the U.S., how much of this was visible in the quarter and how much ballpark is left to benefit from?

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Do you want to start Linda then I can follow up?

[Linda Tybring, executive]

Yes. I mean, repeating when it comes to the price increase, we have seen close to half of it and we will continue to see that gradually over the second as of 2023. When it comes to OpEx, we had an organic growth, revenue-wise of 20%, and we have had OpEx growth adjusted for one timers with 16%. We, as we have said before, we need to continue to invest in sales and marketing to be able to grow so you should expect that our OpEx will continue to grow. But of course, to improve our EBIT, it will not grow as fast as our revenue. Do you want to comment something else Fredrik?

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Yes. I think we still have to and I hopefully this is the last time I say it, but last year's Q2 were still some -- to some degree affected by COVID in the sense that we had unusually lower OpEx levels. And this means, obviously, that the percentage-wise increase should be lower. In the second quarter of last year, we still couldn't really travel to all countries and meet as we can today.

[Linda Tybring, executive]

That's a good point.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And then we have a question from [indiscernible] as it looks now is the final question. Should we expect any additional nonrecurring costs in Q3 related to the Rehadapt acquisition?

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Hopefully no and if they are, they are nonmaterial. The costs that were nonrecurring were largely related to the fairly large team of advisers, et cetera, that you need to conclude a deal. And hopefully, those costs will be significantly lower once we are over that hurdle.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. So that finalizes the questions.

[Fredrik Ruben, executive]

Great. So with that said, thank you, everyone, for dialing into this earnings call as always and for those of you who know us, don't hesitate to reach out. We'd be happy to answer and clarify any questions. Otherwise, until next time, have a great day.

[Linda Tybring, executive]

Thank you.